This invention relates to polyethylene blends.
Colorless polymeric materials range from being almost totally transparent to being opaque. The opacity is related to the light scattering process occurring within, and at the surface of, the material. Incidental radiation passes through non-absorbing, isotropic, and optically homogenous samples with essentially little loss in radiation intensity. Actually, all polymeric materials scattered light to some extent. The angular distribution of the scattered light is a complex phenomenon because of the scattering due to micromolecular interactions.
Transparency is defined, in general, as a state permitting perception of objects through a sample. In more specific terms, transparency is the amount of undeviated light, that is, the original intensity minus all light absorbed, scattered, or lost through any other moans. This scattered light reduces the contrast between light, dark, and other colored parts of objects viewed through the material and produces a milkiness or haze in the transmitted image.
Haze is a measure of the amount of light deviating from the direction of transmittancy of the light by at least 2.5 degrees. In more specific terms, haze is that percentage of transmitted light that in passing through the specimen deviates from the incident beam by forward scattering. In commercial hazemeters, only light deviating more than about 2.5 degrees from the transmitted beam direction is considered haze. The effect of this haze is to impart a cloudy or milky appearance to a sample.
Commercial products are desired that have low haze values. The reasons for wanting such low haze products vary from purely safety purposes to purely marketing purposes. Consequently, methods to produce materials which have low haze values are of great scientific and economic value.
Polyethylene is known as a translucent to opaque white polymer with the opacity increasing with the density. One of the by-products of this is that the haze tends to increase in polyethylene as tho density increases. That is, without optically modifying polyethylene, a polyethylene sample which has a density of 0.93 should have a haze value less than a polyethylene sample which has a density of 0.97 when made under similar conditions. However, in many applications it is desirable to use an ethylene polymer which has a high density because of the desirable properties of high density polyethylene. For example, tensile strength, hardness, chemical resistance, and flexural modulus all tend to increase with increasing density. Consequently, providing a polyethylene resin with a low haze value and a high density would be both scientifically and economically valuable.
It is known in the art to blend components with dissimilar characteristics to achieve a blend with superior performance properties. However, this task is not easy to accomplish. For example, the components of a blend can interact antagonistically resulting in a lowering of the expected performance of the blend, or the components can interact producing a blend that is only the mere aggregation of the separate component parts.
Thermoplastic blends are very desirable for applications such as pipes, films, and bottles. However, each application requires a resin tailored for that particular application. Furthermore, each of these tailored resins are judged by many performance attributes. While it is possible to improve one attribute it is often necessary to find a compromise of the various attributes in order to find a resin which fulfills the customer's requirements.
This invention provides an improved compromise of characteristics thereby increasing the availability of possible solutions to consumer demands.